Sexual Harassment in Videogame Culture

There's so much to learn about harassment in video game culture--not only in-game but also AFK--that it's been very difficult to encapsulate in one article. So I'm breaking it into two parts. Part one, below, describes the problem of sexism in this not-so-niche geek culture and includes interviews from both female and male gamers. Part two discusses potential solutions.

WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE

Shavaun Scott was stalked not once but twice by fellow gamers during her time in Lineage II. As an elf healer named Evanor, she offered her services to a knight and an orc at different times. She said, "They believed we were actually having a relationship. In both cases they'd get really angry if I played with other people instead of them. One called me a whore, or called Evanor a whore."

Scott isn't just a gamer. She's also a psychologist and the co-author of Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects. So she is able to describe her experience as both a gamer and a professional psychotherapist: "It was interesting how I actually felt frightened, even though I knew the guy lived a couple of hundred miles away...it was the dynamic of the relationship he was trying to create."

According to vs247, there are 39 million active MMO gamers in the United States. Although many gamers play to immerse themselves in a different world, the most cited reason people play MMOs is to socialize with friends and potential friends. An estimated 40% of MMO videogamers are female (that number increases to 47% when you account for all videogames), and as some of them can tell you, these social interactions occasionally have negative consequences.

Online games have introduced single people to their future spouses and future careers, as well as have literally and figuratively saved people's lives. Best of all, MMO games, and online gaming in general, are a terrific way to meet fabulous people and kill them.

But a small percentage of players--I have no statistics, but most of the people I interviewed believe that sexual harassment comes from a vocal few--have made online gaming a difficult and unpleasant experience for female gamers.

Let's backtrack. Once upon a time, the world of videogames was clearly a male-dominated one. That overly hormonal male college student or the teenage boy in his mother's basement? Those were in fact the majority of gamers...over twenty years ago. To cater to this audience, videogame companies added sexualizedfemale characters. Scantily clad female characters were the norm--both in game and in real life, as seen by the "booth babes" hired for conventions to entice male gamers to their gaming booths.

Now that MMOs are peopled by women and men in relationships, the single male gamer is still the majority, but less than you might think, and Valve has proven that non-sexual female action heroes can star in award-winning and lucrative games. (Thanks, Portal!)

Still, many games companies have lagged behind the times (see Lollipop Chainsaw as an example of a sexualized female character). So have gamers, who believe that saying "Get out of the game and make me a sandwich" is an appropriate response to encountering a female player. In 2012.

Sadly, some female gamers have come to grudgingly accept this as par for the digital course.

They also fail to report it as well. Sexual harassment is an under-reported abuse in the videogame world for an important reason: Victims don't want to bother. In order to report abuse, victims have to stop playing, find the form to fill out, actually fill them out, and then return to the game--adrenaline diminished and out of the "zone" that so many gamers enjoy.

I also wonder if some of the victims are unwilling to call negative attention to a game they love. And it's because I love videogames that I find it difficult to report what I've seen and heard. In several interviews I conducted, I learned that this harassment and sexism extends beyond the gaming world and into the culture.

What harassment looks like.

In-game harassment:

Scott was stalked in-game by two men over a period of several weeks. Women have received harassinging, even threatening comments, most of them sent as private messages. Here are three, and there are many others like this, found on Fat, Ugly, or Slutty.

They include the sexual:

“im gon make you drop them panties”

The creepy:

“i wanna smell ur taint”

And the violent:

“Listen here bitch. im gonna shoot you in the fucking cunt”

Female gamers have also received photos of a sexually explicit nature.

Sexism:

Jennifer Bosier, the managing editor of VideoGameWriters, had a brush with sexism at this year's E3 when play-testing Medal of Honor: Warfighter. A man at the EA booth offered to help her play. "No matter what I did, he kept going [exasperated sigh].... Then he said, 'I'll just do it for you' and utters the phrase, 'The PC gaming thing, it's kinda hard.' I looked at him and said, 'I've been playing PC games since I was 14.' He was also explaining basic concepts to me, like frames per second. I'm listening to another PR guy describing the historical accuracy of the game, and this guy is giving me PC 101."

Triggering language online:

Anna Kreider, who has illustrated several small press tabletop games, created a feminist gamer blog, GoMakeMeaSandwich. In February 2011, Kreider compiled a list of harassing words on game-related websites such as Destructoid, TeamLiquid, and IGN. For statistical purposes, she also cited web traffic. Kreider found 151,000 uses of the word "rape" on Destructoid alone; that month, Destructoid had 338,000 unique visitors.

(For those who believe that victims of rape should "get over" triggering language, please see this, on the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder.)

Online harassment:

- ArenaNet (GuildWars 2) community manager Regina Buenaobra said, "I have experienced sexual harassment as a games blogger.... The Border House, a feminist gaming blog which I helped start, routinely receives sexually harassing and abusive comments, particularly when it is linked on mainstream gaming websites."

- Although many of the victims are female, gay men receive their own brand of sexual harassment, as seen here.

Gay men having a hard time? I have nothing against gay people. But if they can't play a MMO without flashing their sexuality (how else would others know?), then these "victims" gets zero sympathy from me.

And no, it is NOT wrong to blame the "victims" if they can't accept that MMOs are public arenas where you have to consider what you're revealing about yourself.

- Anita Sarkeesian was the victim of online harassment for creating a Kickstarter project--just for creating one; she has only now begun to start the project--about sexual imagery in videogames. One malcontent developed a game to "punch Sarkeesian in the face."

In brief, in an article in Feministing, Sarkeesian broke down an unfortunate event, where cartoonists of the web series Penny Arcade, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, wrote a rape joke about "dickwolves." (For more on the topic, see this thorough summary of the fiasco.) Note: The links below are mine.

This understandably pissed off a minority of their readers who then contacted the creators through email to complain. Instead of owning up and apologizing for the insensitive joke, they made another webcomic that had a backhanded, pseudo non-apology, apology, and included another rape joke. At a conference, one of the creators drew an image of a “dickwolf” to a cheering audience and later sold the image printed on t-shirts. It wasn’t until one of the creators received a death threat [see February 13] to his family that he came out and said enough is enough, and even then he still didn’t apologize.

On the flip side of that coin, Holkins and Krahulik created the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), a game convention that bans booth babes to make the convention family friendly.

Sexual assault at a gaming convention.

Kreider was the victim of an attack at a gaming convention. She did not elaborate on the details, except to say, "It was assault but not assault." She asks herself the question she believes many want to ask her, "What were you doing to attract this kind of attention? I wasn't cosplaying, I wasn't wearing a skimpy costume, I was with people that I knew. So it was one of those things, quote unquote, that happen."

So why is this happening?

Sexual harassment in MMOs is no laughing matter, even when it comes in a crudely written, badly spelled form that makes the victim chuckle at the absurdity of it.

But why does it exist at all?

According to psychologist Scott, "My thought is that we continue to live in a real life culture that continues to be alarmingly misogynistic under the surface, but the hostility that many males feel towards females is suppressed by social forces (like mothers, law enforcement officers, etc.). In secondary virtual worlds, like MMOs, those controlling social forces are largely absent.... In secondary worlds, males can be anonymous, and allow aggressive impulses to have free reign - and some seem to feel very empowered by this. These are likely men who don't experience a sense of strength or personal power in their primary lives. Perhaps they are threatened by women, and deeply angry at them. They carry those feelings to secondary life and it feels really good to them to act out that hostility - and they are able to do so with impunity.

"As women move into these spaces as players, there may be a reluctance by some men to accept that women have a right to be there. I knew a woman years ago who was one of the first females to ever be hired by the LA County Sheriff Department, and she suffered terribly from persecution for daring to be a female entering male space. She was sexually harassed and intimidated. Some of what happens to women in games reminds me of that."

Scott also said, "We also need to remember that there are a substantial number of people with various forms of mental illness who are very active online." According to the National Institute of Mental Health, "An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year." It stands to reason that some of them play games online.

According to Sarkeesian, "Sexism and misogyny is a culture wide problem that is pervasive on and offline, throughout the media and definitely within gaming culture. I think because gaming has been so male dominated and has catered almost exclusively to men for so long there is a sense of entitlement that is fueling the backlash against women's full participation."

However, she said, these harassers are "not representative of all male gamers or gaming communities. I have received an enormous amount of support from gamers of all genders and even from a considerable number of game developers who recognize that misogyny in gaming culture is indeed a problem and needs to change."

Men speak up.

It's not only women who are concerned with this issue. Men are also disturbed by harassment and sexism. James Bosier, an MMO player who plays to game with his daughter, is also concerned with the bigger picture: "I think [harassment] diminishes the game experience for everyone. It plays into the stereotype that people who play games are nerdy, misogynistic men who live with their parents. It continues to prevent us from being a more respected medium."

MMO gamer Matt Ross, whose girlfriend and female friends are gamers, wonders "what is driving people to behave like that? The anonymity, the values instilled on the internet that things you say don't matter? What is this disconnect in their day to day lives?"

Ross said he wants more action."I think what we need to see is a harder stance from gaming companies. There are community leaders who can step up and say, 'This is a problem.' People who are influential in the industry like Cliffy B [Cliff Bleszinski, lead producer of Epic Games] and Gabe Newell [co-founder and managing director of Valve] should take the time and step up and say, 'Girl gamers are here to stay, and it's not okay to be a total chauvinist pig just because you're on line."

My thoughts.

The argument, "This is a public arena, this is [insert the name of a democratic country here], we can say whatever we want because we have rights," only goes to show that abusers may have freedom of speech, but when they use it to diminish and demean, it makes them terrible people.

It's time, folks. It's time for us to get our game on and put a stop to harassment when we see it. Because harassment of any kind makes the game less fun for all of us

It's time for players to call out harassers. It's time for games companies to take this harassment serious and ban culprits. It's time for harassers to learn that female (and while I'm at it, queer, transgendered, and people who are not like them) players are here, and we're not going away.

And while we're at it, we hope to kick your virtual ass in a mutually respectful way.

For more solutions to this problem, see part 2, coming soon.

An alumna of Clarion West Writer’s Workshop for science fiction and fantasy, I’ve written for markets like The New York Times and Time Out New York. Currently, I write about sci-fi for Blastr. I also edit the humor competition for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fictio...